osCommerce Coupons
Want to offer Coupons on your site? Should be easy just to install an Add On, right? Well usually that is wrong. Coupon business rules tend to be business specific and so there are very few out of the box options you can use. We’ve developed our own version which with a few changes during installation can meet your needs.
What is a Coupon?
Online coupons are basically a code that customers use during checkout to get a discount off their order.
What Coupon types can you have?
Coupons can give discounts based on a percentage or a flat rate.
Coupons are also often used to give free shipping.
Or both.
What business rules do you need to think about?
You can restrict coupon usage by:
- Date
- Number of times the coupon can be used e.g. first 100 orders
- Number of times each customer can use a coupon e.g. once
- Which categories the coupon can apply to
- Which products the coupon can apply to
- Which specific customers can use a coupon.
In additon coupons can be set up to apply to just the product sub-total or the order total.
If your coupon is going to offer free shipping then you need to consider what that means. Does it apply to international shipping? Or just domestic? Is it any shipping service or the cheapest one? Generally businesses offer free ground shipping for deliveries within the country.
If you offer free shipping, can the customer upgrade to a faster service? Again this can vary. You can allow them to upgrade at full cost or you can only offer free ground shipping with no upgrade option. We’ve never known anyone to allow them to upgrade at a discounted cost (cost less ground service cost). Just remember, if you are going to allow upgrades then it is a little more complex to implement.
Do Coupons work with all payment modules?
Coupons work with all payment modules but not all checkouts. If you are using a third party checkout such as PayPal Express Checkout then you need to make sure the coupon is entered on the cart page before checkout commences. This is a variation to how the osCommerce checkout work and needs to factored in when installing the Coupon module.
ozEworks can provide a customized osCommerce Coupon module to suit your needs. Just contact us!
